Some of the biggest health problems that we see in the fall/winter season are: cold and flu, overeating/comfort food, decreased physical activity, and start of SAD. Keep reading to get some tips from our doctors and nurses on how to stay healthy and feel great this fall!

Wash the Cold and Flu Away:

Wash your hands! Now more than any other time of the year is time to exercise good hand hygiene. This helps prevent the spread of germs, like cold and flu bugs, and also can give your hands a quick burst of warmth on cold days.

Share Your Delicious Treats:

If you are making holiday goodies like cookies, pies, or sweet breads, leave enough for yourself and your family to have only 1-2 servings and give the rest to a friend, a neighbor, or someone in need. That way you spread the joy around, and don’t have easy access to tempting foods. This will help avoid the common overeating during the holiday season.

Beat Comfort Food Cravings:

As the days get shorter and colder, our bodies naturally crave warm comfort foods like carbs, starches, and cheese. A healthy alternative is to make soup or chili. This is a good way to incorporate more vegetables in your diet, and you satisfy the comfort food craving. Just be sure and watch the salt though.

Stay Active:

Finding yourself less active this fall? Try raking your leaves instead of using the leaf blower. Its good cardiovascular exercise, and being out in nature can help boost your mood. If your yard is done, then do your neighbors. Your heart, and your neighbor, will thank you.

Always strive to stay active. Make a weekly work-out plan and find an accountability partner. You don’t have to have a gym membership to stay fit. Go biking or running, or find simple home work-out ideas online.

Fight Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) With Vitamin D:

Feeling blue because skies are grey? Get yourself a dose of the sunshine vitamin. Studies have shown that higher levels of Vitamin D in the blood improves mood and cognitive function. Our doctors recommend Vitamin D3 1000 units daily during the fall and winter months.

Stay Hydrated:

Hot coffee and tea always tastes delicious this time of year, but make sure you’re also drinking the proper amount of water to keep your immune system strong. Try drinking half your body weight in ounces each day. You’ll be amazed how much better you will feel!

https://www.chcenters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/leaf-2886341_1280.jpg8531280markhttps://www.chcenters.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/chc-gr-loho-h.pngmark2017-10-31 11:22:222017-10-31 11:47:477 Tips For How to Stay Healthy This Fall

Health and wellness – two pretty general terms that are often thrown around in healthcare literature. However, these two terms are also pretty important for a good understanding of the healthcare system. For example, being “healthy” can be defined by quantitative values like good cholesterol and good blood pressure. For many Americans, it is easiest to achieve this goal by using medications to manage symptoms instead of changing lifestyle. And why not? It’s easy to add another pill to the morning regimen, and most are covered by insurance! “Where is the problem?” you might ask. The problem is that healthcare has become focused on values, statistics, and symptom management instead of the wellness of the person in the office. Yearly physicals and check-ups have turned into a balancing act of prescription strength, interaction, and cost. Additionally, most doctors are seeing incredibly high patient volumes in a very limited time, preventing discussions around lifestyle change and well lifestyle.

Health and wellness is individual, and involves so much more than physical health and symptom management. True wellness must also consider spiritual, emotional and mental health. In the same way that poor lifestyle choices, like smoking or eating pizza for every meal, can negatively affect physical health, daily stress, spiritual disconnection, and negative emotional environments can wreak havoc on the body. Here at Christian Healthcare Centers, we intend to address these issues. Our providers believe that managing symptoms is an important piece of healthcare, but true wellness care should also optimize a person’s body, soul, and spirit. Our hope is that the world will see how we care for our brothers and sisters in Christ, and also learn an improved healthcare model.

Compassion? Integrity? Intelligence? The modern healthcare industry has placed tremendous burdens on our current generation of physicians and mid-level providers. Financial pressures influence our clinicians’ medical decision-making as much as their values and ethics. Technology makes data so accessible that clinicians struggle to manage the volume of information and determine if (and when) clinicians should obtain those data. Politics and special interests manipulate the purpose and objectives for the services that clinicians provide.

With all of these daunting forces altering the current healthcare industry, how do our healthcare providers retain the attributes we have traditionally expected?

The executive team for Christian Healthcare Centers (CHC) has spent the last 5 years developing a clinical model that emphasizes “quality” as defined by our patients and Christ. Most healthcare providers want to provide compassionate, thoughtful, high-quality care. But, the forces listed above apply such pressure upon their time and priorities that

the industry has become less concerned about patient care and more focused on disease management.

“Patient care” focuses on the patient’s needs and concerns in the context of medicine. “Disease management” focuses on the protocols and algorithms of diagnosis and management of disease states. “Quality care” should be the synergy of both. We all want optimal health, but the manner in which care is delivered is as important as the outcomes. Personal mission determines how much “care” a clinician invests in the patient during disease management.

We are defined by what we affirm: commitment to life, biblical values, community stewardship. Our commitment to God dictates that the quality of our stewardship (i.e. disease management) be worthy of His praise. Our purpose as Christians dictates that the manner in which we provide our stewardship (i.e. patient care) be provided with loving compassion.

CHC is committed to high-quality Christian care. All of our patients chose to join this community because they recognize the need for better care than what the current healthcare model provides. Similarly, all of our clinicians joined the CHC care team because they wanted to be missional with their patient care.

We are committed to practicing medicine as God intended: with compassion, integrity, and intelligence. As traditional as our mission seems, modern medicine would benefit from our Christian world view. We intend to redefine the healthcare experience in our nation and are thankful and honored to have your support.